(MENAFN) India and Russia will strike an energy partnership to prepare the way for two Siberian oil deals and chart a route for a first pipeline between the two countries, Arab News reported.

There are doubts over the viability of proposed oil and gas pipeline routes that would either cross conflict-ridden Afghanistan and Pakistan or mountainous tracts of inner China.

But a joint "vision" document is likely to lack hard details, with terms still being beat out for India's ONGC Videsh to acquire an interest in Rosneft's Vankor and Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye oilfields.

"In the present circumstances, when Europe is trying to isolate Russia, Putin wants to show that he has friends in the world," head of the Centre for European Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi said.